Conventionally, there is a disk drive device which is arranged to store control information on a laser modulation method for obtaining a recording characteristic suitable for each kind of optical disks loaded to the disk drive device, and to set an operating condition using the control information (for example, see Patent document 1).
The disk drive device first discriminates the kind of optical disks and then performs a recording operation suitable for each kind of the optical disks by using the control information on the laser modulation method preliminarily stored in accordance with the kind of the optical disks, thereby enabling the best recording characteristic to be obtained.
Patent document 1: Japanese Patent No. 2725561
The disk drive device having such configuration, in which the control information on the laser modulation method corresponding to each kind of the optical disks is stored in advance, is capable of coping with only the case where a known kind of optical disk is loaded, but is unable to cope with the case where an unknown new kind of optical disk is loaded, without updating the firmware, as a result of which the disk drive device has a problem that the best recording characteristic for such unknown recording medium cannot be obtained.